


Tolkien Secret Santa Advent Calendar Day 5: Ghost Stories

by potatoesanddreams



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, In-Universe Folktales, Spooky, Storytelling, TSS Advent Calendar 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27893059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potatoesanddreams/pseuds/potatoesanddreams
Summary: A tale from Arnor. What really happened to Amandil?
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2020 ADVENT CALENDAR





	Tolkien Secret Santa Advent Calendar Day 5: Ghost Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Very much inspired by the myth of the Flying Dutchman!
> 
> The name Nengel is from realelvish.net.

Come sit closer to the hearth, my dears, you’ll catch your deaths of cold. I'm sure I don't know when we've had such a winter. But do you know – I’ve always thought a cold night is the very best for stories. Don’t you all agree?

Yes?

All right.

(Of course you can sit in my lap, love. Climb up.)

The story I am going to tell you is very, very old. I learned it from my mother, and she learned it from hers, and _she_ learned it from her grandmother, who was just a child when it happened, no older than you. So everyone in this story is long dead and gone beyond the world, except – well, you shall find out all about that in due time.

Now the father of my grandmother’s grandmother was a fisherman, and his name was Nengel. Many of the fishermen in that town had only rowboats to fish from, but Nengel was well-to-do, and he had a little ship and a crew of his own. They used to sail far, far away from land, casting nets for the big deep-sea fish, and often they did not return for a week or more. It terrified his wife. She was always thinking of what would happen if he were to be capsized and drowned in some great storm, and she left all alone to provide for their children and her own old parents, with the ship that was the most part of their household’s wealth lost forever beneath the waves. But he never took her fears to heart. Time and again she urged him to be content with a smaller catch, and time and again he reassured her that he was careful, and went on sailing out to the deep places of the Sea.

Well, one day when his ship was all laden down with his catch, and he and his crew were just turning for home, they saw a mass of angry gray clouds blowing swiftly towards them from the western horizon. There was hardly time to reef the sails before the storm was on them. And what a storm it was! The wind was roaring louder than a dragon, so that Nengel and his crew could hardly hear their own thoughts, let alone each other’s voices. It whipped the water into waves that rose as high as the little ship’s mainmast, and the billows tossed her back and forth just as though they were children playing at catch. It was all Nengel could do to cling to the wheel, while the ship heeled wildly this way and that, and the wind tried its best to pluck him from the deck and hurl him into the foaming Sea.

Then, quite suddenly, the wind died away. Nengel looked up in wonder – and what do you think he saw? No, it was not Uinen, though that is a good guess. It was a ship that he saw, a great ship with three tall masts and a figurehead carved in a woman’s likeness, that came sailing towards him out of the gloom. And in the arms of the figurehead there was bound a tree-bough, and it was green.

As he watched, the great ship drew nearer. She turned her broadside to Nengel’s own vessel, and then he saw that there was someone standing at the rail. The dark of the storm was so thick that Nengel could make out almost nothing about the figure, except that it was extraordinarily tall. But as he was squinting up at it in curiosity and no small amount of consternation, it hailed him in the voice of a Man.

“From what port do you sail?” the figure called.

“No port, my friend,” Nengel shouted back, “no port for a ship so grand as yours – only a fishing village with a little shallow bay you’d run aground in. But if you’ll anchor off the coast and row to shore, my wife and I and our neighbors would be pleased to have you to supper, and do what work we can on your ship come morning, for a fair price.” For he saw that the great ship’s hull was all covered over with barnacles, and her mainsail was torn and rent.

“I thank you, goodman,” said the figure, “but we cannot accept your hospitality. We are in great haste, and must not rest until we come to Avallonë.”

“You must be a long way off your course,” Nengel said, “for I’ve never heard of any Avallonë.”

“All the more reason for us to lose no time,” the figure answered him, and turning from the rail it vanished into the stormy gloom. A few moments later the great ship began to come about, and Nengel had to look sharp to keep his own ship from heeling over in her wake. And then the winds came up again and howled about them, and for a while all he could think of was keeping his ship from turning broadside to the waves. So it was that although he saw it plainly, he did not at first notice how strange was the manner in which the great ship departed. Only much later, when the storm had passed and his vessel was limping for home, did he realize: her ragged sails all bellied out, the great ship had sailed away _straight against the wind._

Somehow he and his crew did not care to speak of the encounter to each other. In fact all the way home they spoke hardly at all, unless it were to give commands for the sailing of the ship. But when they had come safe into harbor, and, steaming in a chair by his own hearth-fire, Nengel had endured with repentant humility his wife’s tongue-lashing for the danger he had undergone, he found himself telling his family the story.

You must understand that Nengel was not an educated man. But his wife, now, _she_ knew her history, and when her husband came to the part of the tale that mentioned Avallonë she clapped both hands over her mouth. And if you have been paying attention at lessons, you ought to know why. But if you do _not_ know, I will not make you ask before everybody, and show that you have not been attending to your teachers. Do you recall the story of Amandil father of Elendil the Tall, how he sought the mercy of the Valar for Númenor in her final days? How, just like the wicked king, he sailed for Aman that was barred to him?

Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

Nengel never saw any sign of the ship again. But his daughter – and that is my grandmother’s grandmother who passed on this tale – well, three days after her father’s return, she went down to the seashore to gather mussels. And there on the beach, washed up by the retreating waves, she found a tree-branch lying in the sand, and all its leaves were green. Nor could she make out what manner of tree it might have come from, however long she sat and puzzled at it with her chin in her hands – for she had never seen leaves of that shape before. So she put the branch in her basket and took it home to her mother, forgetting the mussels – she was very young still, you understand. And after her mother and her sisters and her grandparents had all had a look at it, and found that none of them could say what tree it might have come from, any more than my grandmother’s grandmother herself could do, Nengel came home from the day’s fishing. Now it was his turn to clap a hand over his mouth, and he sat down hard in a chair by the door and could not say anything at all for a minute.

You see, he had almost convinced himself that the great ship had been a dream, or a vision conjured up by the crashing of the waves and the roaring of the wind. But now before him plain as day he saw an offshoot of the very bough that the ship’s figurehead had carried in her arms.

When he had got over his shock a little he explained things to his family, and they were all quite overawed and fearful. But they all agreed that it was wisest to keep the branch, for who could say that it had not been given to them a-purpose? – in which case of course throwing it back into the sea would be an insult. So they fastened it above their mantel, and there it stayed for years on years, and not a single leaf of it ever withered. They had talked at first about binding it to the bow of Nengel’s ship, but in the end they never quite dared to try it. For perhaps it had been the green bough that had tamed the storm-winds when the great ship came sailing through them, and then again perhaps it had not been, and the branch was for something quite different. And it is never wise to rely on guesses and perhapses when you are dealing with the uncanny, unless you have no other choice.

Indeed years later there came a time when they _had_ no other choice, and my grandmother’s grandmother snatched the branch from her burning house before fleeing to the bay beneath the storm the raiders had used as cover – but will you look at the hearth-fire? It is all embers already. And some of you are nearly asleep, I am sure. No, I think that is a story for another night.


End file.
